Operation Rainfall: Help Bring Xenoblade, Last Story, and Pandora's Tower to NA

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Hello Wii General Board! It's been a while since I've posted here, but I have come to spread the call to arms to rally Nintendo fans across the interwebs to fight for what they believe in.

How many of you guys have been looking forward to Japanese games like Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower? Well the way things are going, Nintendo has no intentions of bringing these titles over. But we are not going to stand by idle and do nothing about it! That's why some posters at the IGN boards have taken initiative to start a multi-pronged assault to convince Nintendo of America that there is a market here for these games and that we will buy them if they are released here.

What you can do to help:

The biggest thing that Operation Rainfall is planning is to have tons of people mail physical letters to NoA at specified dates to make a larger impact. Plan for your letters for Xenoblade to arrive on July 11-13th. Letters about The Last Story should arrive on July 18-20th. Letters for Pandora's Tower should arrive on July 25-27th. Check out the official blog for a generic template for letters if you don't know what to write.

Call Nintendo, especially on those target dates! I can guarantee you that the customer service representative will give you no useful information, but tell them that you really want to play these games! 1-800-255-3700

Head over to Xenoblade's Amazon page (under the old name "Monado" and preorder the game. Don't worry, Amazon will not charge you money until the game actually ships. It is currently the number one bestselling game on amazon; let's keep it that way to show Nintendo we're interested!

Spam Nintendo's Facebook page and Twitter to generate interest. I personally do not have a Twitter account so I can't say how the operation goes on that front but a single one of their posts on Facebook has almost 4000 comments asking for these games!

Email Nintendo. While you will likely get brushed off with a generic response, it shows them we want these games nonetheless.

Finally, just spread the word! The movement already has strong support. We've been covered by IGNtwice, Destructoid, Kotaku, and Gameinformer among others. This thing is going viral, and you can help make it bigger!

re: Operation Rainfall: Help Bring Xenoblade, Last Story, and Pandora's Tower to NA

I'm still pissed about Earthbound too, but apparently there were "legal" issues preventing its release due to pop culture references.

That said, it's not entirely ridiculous for them to release at least Xenoblade here. It's already translated into English and getting released in Europe. The real work is already done on that game. All NoA has to do is take the script, fix the British misspellings (that's a joke, I kid our British friends!), and print the discs. And if Xenoblade sells, they would probably at least consider The Last Story and Pandora's Tower.

Like Big A2 said, that still doesn't guarantee they're actually gonna do anything about it. Obviously they aren't gonna announce these games for the US over Facebook, so what they said is probably the best response we can get through that medium. That said, we still need all the help we can get, so if you care in the slightest about any of these games, please join the movement!

quote bbb7002004

The second phase of the operation should be getting all these people to actually buy the game if NoA localizes it.

Indeed. If Nintendo brings one of these games over and no one buys it, you can be sure there's no way they'll bring the others over!

re: Operation Rainfall: Help Bring Xenoblade, Last Story, and Pandora's Tower to NA

Not sure what people were expecting. The whole idea behind this is to show that there is interest in the games and to change NoA's mind if they weren't releasing the games. It's not like Reggie can snap his fingers and pencil in a deal and release date for games they don't own the rights two in three days.

Hopefully NoA will rethink their stance and give us some good announcements sometime this fall, hopefully when they get around to telling us actual dates for games like Zelda and the stuff on 3DS.

re: Operation Rainfall: Help Bring Xenoblade, Last Story, and Pandora's Tower to NA

Localization decisions are mostly handled by the local branches though. HD remakes are alright, but a waste of potential when the games should be coming out to support Wii in the interim.

The real problem has been the hits NoA has taken with niche titles over the last couple of consoles. They brought out games like Sin and Punishment 2 or Samurai Heroes or Glory of Heracles, no one buys them, they loose money.

I really wish they would adopt a startup system of some sort. Have a website with a ton of Japanese Nintendo games on it, and allow people to preorder those games. Once enough preorders are reached, the project is greenlit and the discs are burned and sent out to the people that ordered. Call them imports, charge a slightly premium price, and leave the Japanese voicework intact, just adding subtitles and translating menus and you have a great way to support your most passionate fans, make a profit everytime, keep complaining down, and possibly run up on the next big game unintentionally. Wins all around.